Nintendo builds surprisingly resilient hardware, and it’s fairly odd that the Game Boy is so far the only Nintendo product that failed on me. I got my Game Boy shortly after its launch in early 1990s, and played many games on it.

I felt I sort of grew out of Game Boy. My GB library consisted of platformers, and I started to dislike platformers. (Nowadays, I just dislike some platformers. I rather enjoy Castleroids.)

But I got my interest in Game Boy back - my sister started playing Pokémon and got her own Game Boy Color. RPGs on Game Boy? Awesome. In 2000s, I was actually inspired to get a Game Boy Advance, which still remains my favourite Nintendo handheld of all time because of the awesome game library. RPGs on the go!

Of course, with the GBA, I didn’t really need my Game Boy for anything. In 2005, I tried to use my old Game Boy again.

No luck.

It wouldn’t turn on.

It happened to be shortly after John Paul II died - I just concluded that Game Boys don’t work during a papal interregnum. Or something like that. Or there might be some other reason that a mere software guy like me cannot possibly understand. The Hardware works in mysterious ways that mere mortals cannot comprehend.

But now, I just followed the advice of an user in the thread: Open it up, see if the cables are loose. I opened it up. Nothing seemed to be out of place. I put it back together.

It worked again.

These are not exactly the freshest batteries, so I didn’t just leap out and play through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan. (I did fire up my GameCube and played the game on Game Boy Player. Got to the fourth level. Very disappointing, because I prided on ability to play the game through easily enough. Guess I’ll try swapping the jump and attack to proper places next time…)

But still - with a bit of cartridge blowing, Tetris and Super Mario Land fired up just fine. Yay.